Cover

Abstract

The cover image of this Special Issue is a reproduction of an ancient engraving representing Saint Theodore—or San Teodoro, as he is called in the Italian city of Venice—as a horse-mounted warrior defeating evil in the form of a dragon. This image was adopted as the logo of the Oceans from Space ‘Venice 2000’ Symposium because the halls of the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro, where the event took place, were dedicated to Saint Theodore. This historical building—located not far from the Rialto Bridge, in the very centre of the lagoon city—has been the official seat of the Merchant Guild of Venice, protected by Saint Theodore, since the mid 1600s. The Guild, an association of Venetian merchants and artisans, was actually the heir of a much older charitable fraternity, as the first written records of its existence are dated to 829. At that time, Saint Theodore was already the protector of the fraternity, as well as the original Patron Saint of the Venetian city-state. Later on, he was to be replaced by Saint Mark, one of the four evangelists, when Venice moved away from the Byzantine sphere of influence and ‘upgraded’ its godfather in the heavens, to better qualify itself as an emerging political and economic power in the Mediterranean region. Good old San Teodoro, however, remained as the guardian of the city’s very soul, its sea-going merchant vocation, and now as the emblem of a scientific gathering that brought to Venice, ideal capital of the Seas, space oceanographers from the four corners of the world.